We often don’t realise how much our well-being depends on touch. For example, the hand that a friend holds out to me when my fear freezes me on a mountain hike. Or the hug my daughter gives me when we meet again after a long journey. “I’m here for you, you can go on, you can do it,” these touches say. They help – they act like medicine, they make you happy. Touch relieves pain, depression, stress and anxiety. It also has a positive effect on sleep quality, blood pressure, and heart rate, although not as much with psychological problems. 

This has recently been proven again in a new meta-study by the universities of Bochum, Duisburg-Essen and Amsterdam. It analysed over 130 international studies with around 10,000 participants were evaluated for this. “We knew that touch is good for you, but we wanted to find out how and where it can be used sensibly in healthcare,” says research leader Julian Packheiser from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Bochum.

Professor Bruno Müller-Oerlinghausen, Chairman of the German Society for Touch Medicine, would like to offer touch on prescription. He is fighting for its effectiveness to be recognised in medicine. “We’ve been able to show in several evidence-based studies that specific massages are beneficial for depression and chronic pain,” he says. 

Müller-Oerlinghausen has been developing touch therapies for decades and has proven their positive influence on patients, who not only feel better but also need less medication. He is currently working on a project with nursing staff from geriatric and psychiatric wards, who are learning a special calming hand massage. 

The top of the hand contains a particularly large number of C-tactile nerves that are receptive to gentle touch, which is why they are well suited to “affective touch”, which triggers a deep sense of well-being, says Müller-Oerlinghausen. He points out that touch has long been used in neonatal medicine. If a premature baby in an incubator stops breathing, gentle stroking is usually enough to revive the baby. In addition, babies gain weight faster the more they are touched. 

The skin is our oldest and, with a surface area of two square metres, our largest sense, with no less than 20 million sensory cells. And there are special nerve fibres for soft things – the C-tactile neurons react to gentle stroking and touch, which activates our brain. 

After a few seconds, the so-called cuddle hormone oxytocin is released. We breathe more calmly, our heart rate and blood pressure drop, and we relax. At just eight weeks of gestation, still-tiny embryos feel the first touches of the uterine wall. And at birth, the sense of touch is already more developed than all the others – it’s our first language, our first social contact.

Study leader Packheiser has found that shorter, more frequent touches are just as beneficial. “It doesn’t make much difference whether it takes a few minutes or a whole hour,” he says. ‘The longer, the better’ does not apply here – “It doesn’t have to be an extensive massage.” Robots or cuddly blankets can also help, although they don’t come close to laying hands on someone.

The communicative aspect of touch is also particularly important to Müller-Oerlinghausen. Whether it’s a handshake, a hug or a pat on the back, touch has a social meaning and we decode it – consciously or unconsciously. In psychology, the so-called Midas effect has been studied in waiters, who were proven to receive more tips if they touched a guest fleetingly. 

“A touch like a handshake can signal at least eight different emotions,” says Müller-Oerlinghausen. For example, love, approval, anger, joy, sadness – the meaning depends on the social context. “Why else would we hold the dying person’s hand? It has a deep meaning.” He criticises the fact that since the coronavirus pandemic and with increasing digitalisation, touching is not only becoming less common in medicine, but also in everyday life. Interpersonal communication requires touch, which often says more than many words. And they create important memories. 

According to the professor, his mother outlived his father by many years. When asked what she missed most since his death, she didn’t say his voice or his energy. “His warm hands, that was what she missed most.”

Cover art by Maka Kvartskhava